LETTERS.

Rare Exposure

BY ROBERT T. McGEE

Retired Superintendent, Denton, Texas 

* William Powers' "Today's Superintendent: Imperiled or Just Challenged by Board Behavior?" (May 1996) provides rare insights about the erosion of the superintendency. Indeed, Powers has exposed the emperor's new clothes.

To think all this time we had been assured that strategic planning, site-based management, or the latest techniques in crisis intervention were going to save the day.

The superintendent who has not experienced the syndrome Powers outlines so well is (a) long-retired, (b) evading the truth, or (c) working in Nirvana School District far from professors of psycho-babble, insatiable union leadership, and social engineering by judges. He or she will be blessed with parents and school boards that expect and support basic education-plus (you never get the plus without the basics!) and honest, consistent discipline that stresses responsibility.

That lucky school leader would need only one board meeting per year--one long enough to pass a generous budget and allow for testimonies to the positive things happening to kids.

While I grant the need for prudent limits, the undermining of authority for purely selfish reasons exacts a terrible price. Small wonder that those in public leadership tend to shorten their tenure and their long-term commitments.

The issues Powers raises deserve discussion in broader forums. Demanding responsible and accountable behaviors by all involved in the operation of schools may be the only hope to salvage the public schools and their noble history.

A Flawed Critique

BY THOMAS A. SHANNON

Executive Director Emeritus, National School Boards Association, Alexandria, Virginia 

* I was disappointed in William Powers' guest column in the May issue ("Today's Superintendent: Imperiled or Just Challenged by Board Behavior?").

Instead of a first-person chronicle of an experienced superintendent's work with a school board, he offers a disjointed series of hearsay complaints of his colleagues that revealed serious misperceptions of the governance role of the school board and private-sector executives.

Powers places the narrowest of meanings on "policy" when he complains about a board devoting a public hearing to parental complaints about a coach, a teacher's approach to discipline, and school bus routes, rather than dealing with "policy issues. The evaluation of policy governing teacher conduct, student discipline, and transportation were the real issues under consideration. The board also was complying with the First Amendment by providing a forum for citizens.

His litany of school board shortcomings is similarly flawed. It is nonsense to put down today's school board members when they have the richest personal educational background of any school board members in American history, function within the most open society we've ever known, and take part in a style of governance known as participatory democracy.

Powers belongs to the category of school people who see the only legitimate purpose of a school board as being a college of cardinals, charged only with the job of electing the superintendent. Since he disparages school board members elected by a "starting minority of voters," he presumably would separate superintendents elected by less than the unanimous vote of the whole board into a second-rate status.

His misguided infatuation with executive management working conditions in the private sector suggests he ought to do a little research. The May-June issue of Harvard Business Review reveals that "research shows that between 35 and 50 percent of all CEOs are replaced within five years."

The superintendency today is vastly different from what it was when Powers began his professional career. Today, superintendents must be willing to put in long hours and cope with substantial frustration. They must learn to be skillful persuaders and negotiators and learn sophisticated ways to reach out to the public to earn its respect based not just on status but on demonstrated performance.

Citizens' rough-and-tumble involvement in public schooling is not going to go away. Neither are school boards that represent the people of the local community under our American institution of representative governance. If school administrators can't (or don't want to) master those minimal skills, they should stay out of the professional stream that inevitably will lead them in rough waters.